Samantha

Samantha, a free mixtape that piles together recordings from as far back as 2012 and as recent as last month, including collaborations with Washed Out, Rome Fortune, Kool A.D., and more, ably tracks Chaz Bundick’s evolution as a producer and songwriter.

Featured Tracks:

Part of the fun in following Chaz Bundick’s musical trajectory is hearing how he changes up his style from one project to the next. From Causers of This on, each Toro Y Moi release has been a subtle shakeup: 2011’s stellar Underneath the Pine laser-cut the corners of chillwave down to a fine point; 2013’s Anything in Return turned his songwriterly impulses into disco and pop gems; and, most recently, he channeled early experiments with garage and indie rock into this past April’s What For? But each project somehow sounds distinctly like Toro Y Moi, bound by Bundick’s unflagging production chops. The latest Toro Y Moi project, Samantha, is a free mixtape that piles together recordings from as far back as 2012 and as recent as last month. It serves as a neat way of tracking Bundick’s progression as a musician while prominently highlighting his talent for both beat-driven and atmospheric production.

Samantha is filled with unexpected turns. Sparse one- and two-minute instrumental sketches serve as interludes, creating a sense of flow with soul and R&B samples ("Stoned at the MoMA", "Prayer Hands", the Ciara-quoting "Boo Boo Mobile"). Bundick ventures into ambient on glitchy, sedate closer "welp, tour’s over" and "ambient Rainbow", with the latter layering choral vocals and soothing washes of sound to mesmerizing ends. It’s a testament to Bundick’s innovation that he’s still finding ways to contort his signature sound into new shapes. Even when songs do call back to his previous work, as on "Us 2", which pairs a churning hip-hop beat with sugary synth pads that sound lifted from his 2011 cover of Cherrelle’s "Saturday Love", they still put a fresh spin on the approach.

The songs on Samantha are about the ups and downs of relationships, placing most emphasis on the downs. Bundick even goes so far as to tack an extended sample of The Notebook onto the end of creeping, Washed Out-assisted "Want", a move that very narrowly evades tipping over into schmaltz. On the trap-influenced "The Usual", he laments the frustrations of being a workaholic in a relationship, an unusually frank moment from Bundick. Elsewhere, Kool A.D. spins off into woozy, emotionally conflicted verses ("I got problems acting like a fuckin’ grown up," he grouses in Auto-Tune on "Real Love"), while rising Atlanta rapper Rome Fortune relays relationship fallouts on two of the tape’s best tracks, "Pitch Black" and Puff Daddy-sampling "Benjiminz". Samantha lightens up by the end, as on the sweetly jittery "Enough of You", but the main theme seems to be that relationships are complicated messes that can lead to comfort and love as easily as pain and heartbreak.

That Samantha comes in the wake of the guitar-driven What For? makes the mixtape particularly welcome, like a palette cleanser to prepare us for wherever Bundick goes next. Even if he's purging his hard drive of one-offs that didn’t fit anywhere else, with a free-form structure, winning collabs, and appealingly nocturnal ambience, Samantha is a welcome addition to Bundick’s catalog.